One of the main goals of XOIT is to break the classical IT silos into hybrid groups with all the roles necessary to achieve a clear and defined purpose. While we can see this goal being achieved, we have also begun to see challenges with this approach. If you follow the XOIT methodology, there are two main challenges you will quickly experience: Misguided Meeting Focus and Context Switching.

Let me explain.

In the past people where organized in silo teams which were focused on certain IT domains or functions, there is a continued tendency to focus their meetings on what they used to do as opposed to the purpose of the meeting. With XOIT people find themselves participating in teams that are responsible for creating new assets, maintaining existing assets and defining strategies for IT. Regretfully the past still influences the present, and often when someone comes from a maintenance background, their focus remains on maintenance, regardless of the purpose of the meeting they are attending. This syndrome has caused us to miss one of our main objectives: to separate our focus, as a group, between strategy, projects and maintenance. Luckily the solution is fairly simple: if you start a group meeting with the purpose of the group and you stop all discussions that are outside of the purpose, it’s only a matter of time before everyone follows suit.

Context Switching is also related to the fact that people are involved in many groups; unfortunately, the solution for this is not easy at all. When people are participating in different groups (as everyone in XOIT is), every time they move from one group meeting to another, they have to switch their context to the current group. Changing context costs a loss of time because it takes time to do the switch, and also causes confusion – especially if you have to switch context multiple times a day. While we are aware that context switching is a challenge for us, we don’t have a resolution yet.